Assessing executive functions in the real world is virtually possible

Abstract

Executive functions have become a popular research topic since the beginning of the century. Their central role in our daily routines makes them the most representative form of behaviour regulation. Even though there is no general agreement about how they can be classified, there is common consensus that cognitive scientists need to understand their nature and how they interact to modulate human behaviour. Inhibitory control is one of the main exponents of executive functions, and the last decades have witnessed an exponential increase of studies on the inhibitory component thanks to the development of chronometric tasks associated with paradigms that allowed to explore how humans behave in contexts in which resistance to interference is needed. Among the different paradigms typically used, the Simon and flanker tasks are probably the most popular ones. Since their creation, many variants of these tasks have been developed in order to assess inhibitory control from different perspectives (e.g., in different samples or in combination with different research techniques). However, the use of these tasks has been typically governed by classical presentation modalities within laboratory settings. The accessibility of virtual reality technology has opened new research avenues to explore inhibitory skills using adaptations of classic paradigms such as the Simon and the flanker tasks to real-life contexts or settings. Thanks to virtual reality, research on executive function assessment can be undertaken with increased ecological validity, still ensuring laboratory-like controlled conditions and high precision in the measurements. Relying on this technology, here we present two state-of-the-art adaptations of the classical Simon and flanker tasks reinterpreted and adapted to real-world circumstances. Our results show that virtual reality is a reliable tool to assess inhibitory control that could provide valid experimental data with a high level of real-world transferability and generalizability.